The programmatic debate is simplistic, naive and just plain wrong
After the AANA’s media transparency event last week, discussions about ad fraud, viewability and programmatic advertising ramped up, but many of the arguments are missing the point. In this guest post, Luke Brown explains that programmatic works – if you focus on outcomes not eyeballs.
Hey guess what? Programmatic can work. It’s the measurement, stupid (with apologies to Bill Clinton).
We watched the headlines emerging from a AANA event last week with growing ire: “Programmatic not working” and “Programmatic biggest problem”.
Nick Manning, chief strategy officer of Ebiquity UK’s presentation at the AANA’s The Media Challenge: Achieving Transparency Effectiveness to Drive Business Outcomes, has clearly generated a necessary discussion, but not all of it’s been helpful.
I’m not here to pick a fight with Nick or the AANA, but I can’t leave this stuff out there unanswered, so here goes. This kind of rhetoric is simplistic, naive and just plain wrong.
This article is full of fallacious statements but to say fraud is a red herring is the most laughable.
Attributing conversions to ads that have been seen may lead to a lower ROI, but significantly more sustainable than cookie bombing….. which you seem to be advocating because the ROI is higher.
Those days are well and truly gone…..
…as it has always been.
But glad you realise that now.
Luke, I don’t know if you attended the Sydney meeting, but you may not have got the full story. The point I made about programmatic advertising is that the majority of our clients find that it isn’t working for them when measured properly (in terms of its contribution to their business). The return-on-investment can be poor. One reason is that the actual amount of exposure is low due to the high costs of ‘production’ and poor viewability/high non-human content. We do a lot of conversion optimisation work to improve return for performance-based clients, but many clients are looking for less direct measures, and can’t track effect in the same way. Attribution is difficult for performance and even harder for brands who are using online advertising for different reasons.
We do see some advertisers making programmatic advertising work (usually direct response clients) but for the majority, it doesn’t pay back. And this is the experience for many others who, like us, work in the measurement industry.
@NickManning – thanks for this comment. The article which was written about your talk made it seem like your entire talk was about (lack of) transparency and problems with programattic. I didnt know that the majority of your clients find it works for them. You should contact the journalist and ask for an accurate and balanced coverage of your talking points. Otherwise it seems like you are spouting self-serving statements designed to frighten advertisers into using more consulting services (more Ebiquity revenue)
Hi Nick,
Appreciate your comments.
No, I wasn’t there on Tuesday, instead I was responding to the way in which your talk was represented in the media, and in the absence of any constructive comment on a more holistic perspective.
It sounds like we’re largely on the same page, that there’s so much more to the programmatic ‘issue’ than transparency.
Irrespective of whether a direct (DR) or indirect (awareness) outcome is desired, my point was that a clear outcome needs to be defined and agreed to before programmatic is earmarked in the media plan. In every case any media decision is made, there has to be a commercial reason for each and every investment. And the kicker is that no business should execute a strategy without measurement of its effectiveness in place – whatever the agreed outcome is. If this all seems a bit obvious, I agree. But clearly it’s not the norm in the industry otherwise more campaigns would be ROI positive.
I agree that brands with protracted purchase cycles such as automotive, consumer electronics or pharmaceuticals certainly pose a challenge for attribution, but effective measures (detailed/specific + responsive/fast) can be found. Sometimes the solution isn’t tech, but boring old fashioned business basics. And yes, it can take effort to do it but from experience I can tell you, it is always possible.
Finally, agree programmatic isn’t the solution for every problem. But when used intelligently in conjunction with well considered outcomes, it can be a powerful business tool to meet a broad range of business goals.